Thirty Things To Do After You Die — Chapter 2

Illustration created by Larry Amzo incorporating Wellcome Collection public domain mark images (compound and single microscope, The Pool of Bethesda, Jerusalem, Israel, Sarah is ritually laid to rest in a sepulchral cavern) and bearded man by Drew Hayes (free use under the Unsplash License). Created for Colton Lazars.

Beatrice poured Christian’s tea down the sink and washed up the mugs. She dried her hands and again read the stolen page of A4. It wasn’t as shocking, third time around, but was no less troubling. The setting and genre were as expected — those being among the few details Christian had been ‘ready to share’ — but the cast of characters was dumbfounding: Christian’s decrepit father, their neighbour Mrs Kapoor, and Christian himself — ‘a lean man with the quiet charisma of a professional snooker player’ … as if — all apparently mixed up in the underworld of the Central American cocaine trade. On top of this, the text was speckled with strange spelling mistakes — words you should never get wrong — some corrected with biro, others missed.

A sound from upstairs. She held her breath.

Silence.

Beatrice was classically proportioned, with soft, full features she’d once made much more of. Her hair, too, these days, was restrained — uncoloured, undreadlocked, unremarkable. It was a good thing, emancipating even. She was in her thirties now, she had better things to do with her time. It played better at work, too, and it sat better with Christian, or at least she assumed it did.

They’d been together for almost seven years, engaged for the last four. In the beginning it had been good and in many ways it…